The morning of Day Three again started with the granola challenge which I won out of necessity. My feet also required more TLC than before so my mood was a little subdued despite the fact that I was doing - compared to my expectations - remarkably well.
Right from the beginning I had known that the day that could really make or break me was going to be Day Four, the 80km stage. Because of this I was planning on taking Day Three not easy, but I was intending to run conservatively to ensure I was in the best possible shape for Day Four. That wasn't to say I wasn't going to give Day Three a good go, I just knew that after holding it together on the first two days I mustn't screw it up now. The stage was 37.5km long, of which about three quarters would be some variation on sand, according to the road book.
By now the morning routine of singing (Happy Birthday), cheering (Danny Kendall) and dancing (to ‘Happy’ of course), along with Patrick’s briefing with accompanying ‘translation’, was well established and soon we were off across hilly, stony terrain which, with the same inevitability as the ‘Happy’ dance each morning, soon gave way to sandy terrain, sand mounds and - you guessed it - dunes.
Less the 5km after Checkpoint One the road book said ‘Fin du sable’ - Sand ends. This didn't mean life was going to become easy of course and after a few kilometres over stony ground I arrived at the base of Foum Al Opath Jebel, a 12% climb of over a kilometre along a gorge that would take me over the side of the Jebel without, fortunately, requiring me to go right over the top of it.
The summit of the climb was another of those views that took away any breath I had remaining. As I’ve said before, this is purely my account of my MDS but I think I can say that for me, no matter how hard the climb, none of the summits I reached ever disappointed in terms of the view provided, and when that view included the finish, well that was even better.
However this particular summit was barely half way through the stage and so, despite the vast distance I could see, the finish was not part of it. The descent became less and less stony and more and more sandy until it was time for some more sand dunes. Crossing these entailed much walking across sandy slopes, which really wasn't helping my feet. Checkpoint Two was located at the exit of the dunes, four hundred metres from the next set.
After the dunes the run into CP3 crossed a vast flat open plain. This was very easy to run on but at the same time was so vast I felt slightly agoraphobic as I crossed it and was quite pleased I wasn’t crossing it alone. This was one of several occasions on the MDS when I realised just how small I am compared to the world.
After CP3 it was only 5km to the finish, the shortest section of the 2014 MDS. I passed the ruins of Ba Hallou to enter the last kilometre of the inevitable ‘sandy terrain’ to the finish of Stage Three.
Stage Three was marked my lowest performance in the 2014 MDS. I completed it in 6 hours, 4 minutes and 58 seconds, slightly more time than I had taken for Stage Two, which was 3.5km longer. I was 280th on the day which slipped me down to 248th overall. I was still top 250 - just - but would have to do better on Stage Four, the 80km stage, if I was to retain my ranking.
So was I disappointed with my Day Three performance? After a couple of week’s reflection I'm still not sure. At the time I was slightly surprised I hadn't done a little better as I didn't feel like I had taken it that easy, however the plan had always been to make sure I finished Day Three in a state fit to take on Day Four. The sand was also taking its toll on my feet which didn't help. It wasn't getting into my shoes - the Racekit gaiters did a superb job of preventing that - but the sideways shearing forces on the soles of my feet were pulling the layers of skin apart. Obviously that didn't help my speed across the dunes and other variations on sand I encountered. Now I can look at the results and put my performance into context, if I had been 10 minutes faster I would have jumped over 30 places, which explains why the effect on my overall placing wasn't as bad as it could have been. I think on balance I can’t say my Day Three performance was disappointing as it left me in the top 250 and ready (feet permitting) to really attack Day Four. Interestingly, one thing I had noticed from reading other peoples blogs before the event was that Day Three often seemed to be a low point for competitors and whilst I fortunately never had any points that were as low as some seemed to suffer, it probably was my lowest ebb of the week.
The principle method by which I could communicate with the outside world was by email, however there was also Bivouac TV, so I went and made a short video telling everyone it was hard, thanking them for their support and asking for more of the same. The rest of Day Three was spent eating and preparing and planning Day Four. As I said at the beginning, Day Four could make or break my MDS - which would it be? Or would it just go averagely well and not really do either? All will be revealed in the next instalment of my epic race across the Sahara.
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